Speaker 1: As a researcher, if I note the first few words
Speaker 1: of a conversation, I can have a high degree of
Speaker 1: likelihood of predicting the outcome. Welcome to the one you
Speaker 1: feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance of
Speaker 1: the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think, ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf right. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is Michelle galan national CBS News anchor turned
Speaker 1: positive psychology researcher, and she is the best selling author
Speaker 1: of Broadcasting Happiness. Michelle is the founder of the Institute
Speaker 1: for Applied Positive Research and is partnered with Arianna Huffington
Speaker 1: to study how transformative stories fuel success. She is an
Speaker 1: executive producer of the Happiness Advantage special on PBS and
Speaker 1: a featured professor on Oprah's Happiness Course. Michelle holds a
Speaker 1: Master of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and her research and advice have received attention from The
Speaker 1: New York Times, Washington Post, Forbes, CNN, Fox, and Harvard
Speaker 1: Business Review. If you value the content we put out
Speaker 1: each week, then we need your help. As the show
Speaker 1: has grown, so have our expenses. In time commitment, go
Speaker 1: to one you feed dot net slash support and make
Speaker 1: a monthly donation. Our goal is to get to five
Speaker 1: percent of our listeners supporting the show. Please be part
Speaker 1: of the five percent that make a contribution and allow
Speaker 1: us to keep putting out these interviews and ideas. We
Speaker 1: really need your help to make the show sustainable and
Speaker 1: long lasting. Again, that's one you Feed dot net slash Support.
Speaker 1: Thank you in advance for your help. And here's the
Speaker 1: interview with Michelle Galen. Hi, Michelle, welcome to the show. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for having me. It's great to
Speaker 1: be here with you. I'm happy to have you on.
Speaker 1: You work with and your husband is Sean aker who
Speaker 1: wrote a book called The Happiness Advantage, and you have
Speaker 1: a new book out called Broadcasting Happiness, which will dive
Speaker 1: into here in just a minute. But before we do,
Speaker 1: let's start, like we always do, with the parable. In
Speaker 1: the parable, there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson.
Speaker 1: He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and
Speaker 1: he thinks about it for a second, and he looks
Speaker 1: up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Well. I love that parable
Speaker 1: ever since I read it many many years ago, and
Speaker 1: now I get to look at it from a scientific
Speaker 1: perspective as a positive psychology researcher. And what's amazing is
Speaker 1: that you know, our brain, our brain is an incredible processor.
Speaker 1: We can process forty to fifty bits of information every
Speaker 1: single second of the day, the challenges that from all
Speaker 1: of our nerve endings. Our brain is bombarded by more
Speaker 1: than eleven million bits of information every second. So what
Speaker 1: that means is inherently there are choices and how we
Speaker 1: devote our attention, right, because if we first spoke us
Speaker 1: on the hassle's complaints, problems and challenges, we literally don't
Speaker 1: leave our brain resources left over to focus on the
Speaker 1: things that we're grateful for, the meaning embedded in the
Speaker 1: work that we're doing, the close relationships that we have,
Speaker 1: and so um, just like you know, the little boy
Speaker 1: asked who wins for us, the way our life unfolds
Speaker 1: is a result of how we devote our attention. If
Speaker 1: we can make those positive, conscious choices, then our life
Speaker 1: completely changes in a positive way. Yeah, I agree completely.
Speaker 1: I love that comparing our attention, you know where we're
Speaker 1: putting our attention to the wolf parable Now. Your book
Speaker 1: is called Broadcasting Happiness, um, and it comes from the
Speaker 1: idea that you were an anchor woman and what you
Speaker 1: started realizing was that the way the news was being
Speaker 1: reported was always negative and it was actually driving people
Speaker 1: away from it, and so you began looking at ways
Speaker 1: that you could broadcast a better message. Is had a
Speaker 1: good summary of kind of where you started. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I was so lucky to have the opportunity and the
Speaker 1: platform of two national news programs at CBS. But what
Speaker 1: I quickly saw was that a lot of the news
Speaker 1: we're reporting was so negative. But it was more than
Speaker 1: just the negative to positive stories. It was the fact
Speaker 1: that a lot of the stories just merely focused on
Speaker 1: the problem. We didn't talk about what could be done
Speaker 1: about the problem and uh. And so what we see
Speaker 1: now in our research is that a barrage of negative
Speaker 1: news stories basically feeds you this lie that your behavior
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. Because if we just constantly talk about problem, problem, problem, problem,
Speaker 1: and we don't focus on what is our role in
Speaker 1: solving these situations, then we are left feeling hopeless and helpless.
Speaker 1: And that's what a lot of people feel when they
Speaker 1: just see a newscast for a couple of minutes or
Speaker 1: they read stories online. Um. More recently, you know, since
Speaker 1: I left CBS News, I partnered with my husband, Shawn
Speaker 1: Acre and Arianna Huffingtons, and we've been sting the effective
Speaker 1: news on the brain. And what we found is that
Speaker 1: just three minutes of negative news in the morning can
Speaker 1: lead to you having a twenty seven percent higher likelihood
Speaker 1: of reporting your day is unhappy six to eight hours later.
Speaker 1: So what that means is that negative mood and mindset
Speaker 1: we adopt in the morning is we're you know, making
Speaker 1: breakfast or we're on our way to work, actually sticks
Speaker 1: with us through our work day and we're still feeling
Speaker 1: the effects, you know, when the day is almost over. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you also talk about a study where people who
Speaker 1: watch the local news view their city as significantly more
Speaker 1: dangerous than it really is. So they think it's more
Speaker 1: dangerous than what the actual facts say. Yeah. Absolutely, And
Speaker 1: so it goes back to sort of what we're talking
Speaker 1: about at the top of the program, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: you only have these finite resources. If we supt if
Speaker 1: we spend those resources filling our brains with how dangerous
Speaker 1: the world is, how our community is failing, how things
Speaker 1: are going wrong, how the world is broken, then our
Speaker 1: brain doesn't have those resources to look at ways in
Speaker 1: which our behavior matters, or which ways in which we
Speaker 1: can affect a positive outcome. You know the title of
Speaker 1: my book Broadcasting Happiness. Someone wrote on a comment on Amazon,
Speaker 1: um something which you know, I totally agree with, which
Speaker 1: he's like, well, in some ways the title doesn't do
Speaker 1: the content justice, and that you're not saying, hey, just
Speaker 1: broadcast some you know, Pollyanna rose colored glasses look of
Speaker 1: the world. We don't want to just be talking about
Speaker 1: puppies and kiddies and water skiing squirrels, right we it's
Speaker 1: really about Yeah, those are all great things. Especially, we
Speaker 1: really want to be focusing, you know, we want to
Speaker 1: spend some of our resources, of course, like laughing and
Speaker 1: having fun in the humor, but we also want to
Speaker 1: talk about if we're talking about problems, talk about what
Speaker 1: we can do and source out solutions, and then also
Speaker 1: focus on stories of individuals and organizations where people have
Speaker 1: overcome challenges or they've done in hiring things, and that
Speaker 1: gives our brain hope and optimism that we two can
Speaker 1: create progress and success in our own lives. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of things in what you just said there that
Speaker 1: that I want to touch on. The first is listeners
Speaker 1: who have been with the show for a long time
Speaker 1: know that I'm skeptical of positive thinking, and that's not
Speaker 1: what you're advocating here, um, And so I'll ask you
Speaker 1: to maybe elaborate a little bit more on you know,
Speaker 1: why this isn't positive thinking. And then the other thing
Speaker 1: that you talked about through all of those things is
Speaker 1: not about ignoring that there's bad things, but it's about
Speaker 1: not believing that we are helpless in the face of them,
Speaker 1: or not believing that there isn't something we can do,
Speaker 1: and that feeling of helplessness or that there's nothing we
Speaker 1: can do can be one of the leading causes of depression. Yes,
Speaker 1: so the reason I left CBS was because I wanted
Speaker 1: to understand how we can talk about the negative, whether
Speaker 1: it be on TV or around the dinner table in
Speaker 1: our businesses, in a way that does not leave people
Speaker 1: feeling helpless and hopeless, but actually leaves you feeling empowered
Speaker 1: and ready to take that next step to create positive action. Psychologically,
Speaker 1: it's a completely different state to be in that latter state. Um,
Speaker 1: And so you know, I got the opportunity to study
Speaker 1: under Dr Martin Seligmann, who's a founder of the field
Speaker 1: of positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and he's
Speaker 1: actually the person who did incredible work on learned helplessness. Originally,
Speaker 1: learned helplessness is this learned behavior that your mind can
Speaker 1: adopt as a result of learning that your behavior doesn't matter. Um.
Speaker 1: It's actually also considered the gateway to depression. Now, he
Speaker 1: saw how powerful that mindset can be in our lives
Speaker 1: and how that mindset can be learned, and he said, well,
Speaker 1: what if we flipped the coin over and we look
Speaker 1: at the other side, and we say, well, can we
Speaker 1: teach then learned basically empowerment, you know, teaching somebody their
Speaker 1: behavior matters. Um. And So what I studied out is
Speaker 1: the science behind a success mindset. UM. What causes you
Speaker 1: to be most successful in your life? What are the ingredients,
Speaker 1: how does your mind work as a result, and then
Speaker 1: how can other people import those elements into their own
Speaker 1: thinking to achieve more and thrive um. And what we
Speaker 1: found in our research is that there are three greatest
Speaker 1: predictors of long term levels of success. So we study
Speaker 1: this primarily in the work domain because we work with
Speaker 1: Fortune five companies and schools and other organizations, but this
Speaker 1: also very much applies to one's relationships and their home
Speaker 1: life and their parenting UM. And what we found in
Speaker 1: short is this, UH that it's work optimism, what we
Speaker 1: call support provision and then your relationship with stress. So
Speaker 1: work optimism is the belief that your behavior matters and
Speaker 1: the expectation of good things to happen. It's taking a
Speaker 1: realistic assessment of the present moment like you mentioned, and
Speaker 1: but then in the midst of all those challenges, believing
Speaker 1: you can actually do something about it and good things
Speaker 1: will eventually come about if we work hard. Um. The
Speaker 1: second one is our our story about stress. Do we
Speaker 1: view a stressful event as a challenge where our brain
Speaker 1: gets lit up to its highest potential and our brain
Speaker 1: and body are ready for that challenge, or do we
Speaker 1: cower and fear and look at it like a threat
Speaker 1: where our brain suffers consequences as a result. Um. And
Speaker 1: the last one, which I find actually to me in
Speaker 1: some ways the most exciting, is this idea of support provision.
Speaker 1: Instead of asking how supportive is my company of me
Speaker 1: and my success and my progress, we look at uh
Speaker 1: something that's incredibly more predictive of long term success, which
Speaker 1: is how much you as an individual support the people
Speaker 1: around you. And the people who are in the top
Speaker 1: quartile the top of that metric are actually, as just
Speaker 1: one example in our research, more likely to receive a
Speaker 1: promotion over the next year than the people in the
Speaker 1: lowest quartile. When people sore in the top levels of
Speaker 1: all three of these metrics, they make more money over
Speaker 1: the course of their career. They are just incredibly successful
Speaker 1: on many fronts. But what's most exciting is that these
Speaker 1: three elements of our mindset are malleable, so at any
Speaker 1: point in our lives, we can develop higher levels of
Speaker 1: all three of them. The last one is interesting because
Speaker 1: you're talking about how we support other people and your
Speaker 1: book Broadcasting Happiness. That's kind of obviously it's a play
Speaker 1: on your time as a broadcaster, but it's also about
Speaker 1: the idea that we're all putting something out into the
Speaker 1: world that affects those people around us. Yeah. A lot
Speaker 1: of the research in positive psychology, which is basically studying
Speaker 1: happiness and human potential, has looked at how we as
Speaker 1: individuals can thrive, and what my work now is looking
Speaker 1: at is, Okay, so when you have a positive mindset
Speaker 1: and you've done all that work, how do you ripple
Speaker 1: that out to other people? And maybe also when you're
Speaker 1: not feeling as positive, how do you still have a
Speaker 1: beneficial impact on the people around you. We have a
Speaker 1: new program coming out called Inspire Happiness on PBS, and
Speaker 1: it was a result of the work that we did
Speaker 1: with companies and individuals where we would talk about all
Speaker 1: this research that looked at how you as an individual
Speaker 1: can thrive and people would say, okay, well, so I'm
Speaker 1: totally into this, but how exactly do I help my
Speaker 1: child do well in school when I can see that
Speaker 1: they have potential but my you know, my son doesn't
Speaker 1: believe it, Or how do I help my negative spouse
Speaker 1: like I'm naptimistic one, and but you know, my my
Speaker 1: spouse is not as optimistic as I'd hope for, you
Speaker 1: know them to be. UM. And so our show is
Speaker 1: and and a lot of the content it's drawn from
Speaker 1: some of the ideas in my book. It revolves around
Speaker 1: this this concept of you know, you have the power
Speaker 1: through what you say and how you say it, to
Speaker 1: really significantly change other people for the better. But we
Speaker 1: walk through the steps and give the tools of exactly
Speaker 1: how to do it and UM. And then also we
Speaker 1: talk about the fact that you know, it is much
Speaker 1: easier to choose happiness yourself when you're able to help
Speaker 1: the people around you become happier. At the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the importance of other people is a theme that keeps
Speaker 1: coming up on the show over and over again. And
Speaker 1: when you were saying that, the supporting other people, it
Speaker 1: made me think of one of our guests, Chris Hope,
Speaker 1: who when I read him The Wolf Parable, he said, well,
Speaker 1: the way I think about that is what wolf am
Speaker 1: I feeding in the people around me? And I thought
Speaker 1: that was a really interesting perspective on it and really
Speaker 1: talks very much to what you're saying. Yes, I love that,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, as a result of this work, I mean,
Speaker 1: of course I use it when I do work with clients,
Speaker 1: but I also end up using it on myself and
Speaker 1: in our family. Uh we battle tests in our own
Speaker 1: house and being married to a happiness researcher, I have
Speaker 1: zero excuse not to do it. But but what I
Speaker 1: have become hyper aware about is when I am feeding
Speaker 1: that other wolf the world. We don't want to feed
Speaker 1: right because I'm feeling negative. Move But I haven't slept
Speaker 1: very well the night before. I've got a two year old.
Speaker 1: As any parent knows, that can happen. Um and uh,
Speaker 1: and you know, I wake up in a grumpy mood
Speaker 1: and I get to a point where I'm saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: I know that my day is not going to be
Speaker 1: as happy as it could have been had I just
Speaker 1: gotten a good night's sleep. But am I kind of
Speaker 1: now inflict my suffering on everybody that I come into
Speaker 1: contact with? Or am I going to be a little
Speaker 1: bit more emotionally evolved hopefully you know, practice it every
Speaker 1: day and and just and realize that you know, what
Speaker 1: I talk about, and whether I complain or whether I'm
Speaker 1: you know, moaning about how I didn't sleep, that really
Speaker 1: does impact other people. And so I think it's you
Speaker 1: know a lot of people will say, um, so when
Speaker 1: I give talks that companies all set so how many
Speaker 1: of you raise your hand? Have ever heard from somebody
Speaker 1: you can't change other people? And uh? And I get
Speaker 1: I mean literally everyone raises their hand, right, You've heard
Speaker 1: this many many times over the course of your life.
Speaker 1: But we know, though that even though we're buying into
Speaker 1: this societal misbelief, we know that we change people all
Speaker 1: the time through what we talk about and even our
Speaker 1: non verbal body length, which and so owning up to
Speaker 1: that power and responsibility I think is a really important
Speaker 1: thing to do. I do think it's a myth also
Speaker 1: that we can't change other people. I think that we
Speaker 1: can't change other people into exactly what we want them
Speaker 1: to be or doing exactly what we want. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we do have influence over people all the time, both
Speaker 1: positively and negatively. Yeah, without a doubt. I mean we
Speaker 1: see in the research I love. There's this one study
Speaker 1: from the University of California, Riverside where researchers asked three
Speaker 1: people to go sit in a room for just two
Speaker 1: minutes without speaking, and then they tested their mood before
Speaker 1: and after. And what they found is that the person
Speaker 1: who's the most non verbally expressive, right because they're not
Speaker 1: saying a word, but it's how they sat there, their
Speaker 1: body language, that their arms crossed, their faces browning. Do
Speaker 1: they seem more positive and relaxed. Whoever was the most
Speaker 1: expressive person in the room influences the mood of the
Speaker 1: other two people significantly. And that's just two minutes. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine if we have the ability to talk to
Speaker 1: people and to say meaningful things, we can change other people.
Speaker 1: And it happens all the time. Eric has an announcement
Speaker 1: to make now, and I've decided that while he does it,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make it as difficult as possible for him
Speaker 1: to finish it. There's gonna be a lot of interruptions.
Speaker 1: Go ahead. First, I want to say thank you to
Speaker 1: everybody who has made a donation. It means an awful
Speaker 1: lot to us. It's really nice to be out here
Speaker 1: and knowing that people care about and support the show.
Speaker 1: One of the people in the one You Feed Facebook
Speaker 1: group made an analogy earlier this week about a donation
Speaker 1: that I thought was really good, and he said, if
Speaker 1: I bumped into Eric or Chris at a coffee shop
Speaker 1: or at a lunch place, wouldn't I buy him coffee
Speaker 1: or a sandwich? I think he'd be sorely disappointed if
Speaker 1: he met me. I mean, you're a celebrity status. He'd
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, he'd have more fun with you, though
Speaker 1: I'd probably be grumpy and thinking about something that, you know,
Speaker 1: reading a book or I am a hoot, you know.
Speaker 1: And if I ran into Eric in a coffee shop,
Speaker 1: I would call the police and have them arrested. Story
Speaker 1: that's happened. So if you would buy us a cup
Speaker 1: of coffee, if you ran into us in person, please
Speaker 1: consider making a donation to the show so that we
Speaker 1: can keep the show running and keep talking to each other.
Speaker 1: That's one you feed dot net slash support. And here's
Speaker 1: the rest of the interview with Michelle Galen. So let's
Speaker 1: go back to my earlier thoughts on positive thinking, because
Speaker 1: I want to ask you sort of what's the difference
Speaker 1: between what you are proposing and what's traditionally labeled as
Speaker 1: positive thinking positive thinking? I think, um, well, there's two
Speaker 1: major differences. First of all, we're looking at the science
Speaker 1: behind all of this, which says, okay, we know, for instance,
Speaker 1: that gratitude is good for you, right, and every single
Speaker 1: major religious tradition talks about it. All the leading thinkers
Speaker 1: through the ages have touted the the you know, positive
Speaker 1: side of being grateful and practicing it. What we ask
Speaker 1: is researchers is okay, well, how much should you do specifically,
Speaker 1: how do you do it? Do you involve other people
Speaker 1: in the practice? Should you write in a notebook? Is
Speaker 1: it better on your computer? And if we do it,
Speaker 1: how much does it change you? You know, there was
Speaker 1: a study done with I love this study eighty year
Speaker 1: old grumpy pessimists and uh and research trying to optimistic.
Speaker 1: And what I love about it is that you know,
Speaker 1: these guys who had been practicing pessimism their entire life
Speaker 1: by doing gratitudes, by doing three writing down three new
Speaker 1: and unique things they were grateful for specific things each day. Um.
Speaker 1: Those that kept up the practice for six months went
Speaker 1: from testing on a metric as low to moderate level pessimists,
Speaker 1: they all of a sudden, we're testing as low to
Speaker 1: moderate level optimists. So we could see a change there. Um.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is that sometimes positive thinking can
Speaker 1: be mislabeled as I mean or accurately labeled depending on
Speaker 1: what you know the person's promoting as sort of I'm
Speaker 1: going to think positively and stuff will happen and everything
Speaker 1: is going to be great. What I think is that
Speaker 1: you need a positive vision in your life, full of
Speaker 1: hope and optimism to get you going. That's the good fuel,
Speaker 1: but it takes action behind that. So broadcasting happiness is
Speaker 1: broadcasting that mindset while also taking the action to fulfill
Speaker 1: the vision of what you're looking for. Yeah, one of
Speaker 1: the questions that I talk about on the show, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna see if I can frame it in a
Speaker 1: way that makes sense. But there's a lot of talk about, Hey,
Speaker 1: when you have an emotion you should try and feel
Speaker 1: that emotion and not not repress it. Um. And then
Speaker 1: there's the other side of the coin that sort of
Speaker 1: says you should put a positive spin on things that
Speaker 1: happen in your life. How do you reconcile those two
Speaker 1: things for yourself? I would say that it's important to
Speaker 1: feel emotions. We actually we absolutely want to be in
Speaker 1: touch with them, but we have to catch ourselves not
Speaker 1: to allow ourselves to dwell in or ruminate on these
Speaker 1: negative emotions, because ultimately, I don't think that actually helps you. Um.
Speaker 1: There is value to kicking your brain out of that
Speaker 1: negative state, either distracting it or compelling it to to
Speaker 1: move to a more positive place. You know. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: So my husband and I when we had our son Leo. UM,
Speaker 1: initially when he started walking around and you know, falling
Speaker 1: down and stuff, we had completely different responses to him
Speaker 1: getting hurt. So not hurt really badly, right, but just
Speaker 1: like a little bump and he starts crying. And so
Speaker 1: I would come to our son and say, oh, Leo,
Speaker 1: did you get hurt? Oh, I'm so sorry, honey, where
Speaker 1: does it hurt? And Sean, while showing compassion, would very
Speaker 1: quickly switch to distraction, you know, and so say, oh,
Speaker 1: look at that, there's a fire truck, or oh look
Speaker 1: what's going on? And what we ended up we had
Speaker 1: a long discussion about this, and what we ended up
Speaker 1: doing was deciding to kind meet in the middle at
Speaker 1: where we honor the feelings that he was having. Right
Speaker 1: it hurt, his knee was skinned, and we gotta we
Speaker 1: gotta address that, but also not staying stuck there. And
Speaker 1: so then I adopted more of his his approach, which
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, now let's let's distract and let's figure
Speaker 1: out what's positive about life that we can move our
Speaker 1: brain onto. And I think it's worked really, really well.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great analogy, and I also believe
Speaker 1: that it's the middle ground on a lot of these
Speaker 1: things that makes sense. Like even what we were talking
Speaker 1: about before about you can't change other people. That's such
Speaker 1: an extreme position. You know, there's somewhere between I have
Speaker 1: total control and I have no control over other people.
Speaker 1: That's sort of in the middle. And I think with
Speaker 1: that is the same thing in an analogy that that
Speaker 1: I like to use, and you might have better ones
Speaker 1: because you do this more often. Is like if I
Speaker 1: walk into a hotel room, which I do often if
Speaker 1: I look, there's inevitably something about that hotel room I'm
Speaker 1: going to be dissatisfied with, and there's something in that
Speaker 1: hotel room that I'm going to really like. And which
Speaker 1: of those am I going to choose? To Back to
Speaker 1: your first piece, you talked about which of those am
Speaker 1: I going to put my attention on? And sometimes I
Speaker 1: have to very consciously keep putting my attention back to
Speaker 1: the positive one. But I think it does yield benefits. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and sometimes where it's easier for us to keep our
Speaker 1: attention on the positive things. And I love your analogy
Speaker 1: because it's so visual, it's so easy. We've all done
Speaker 1: it right, We've we've all walked into a place and
Speaker 1: seen the problems as opposed to seeing the things that
Speaker 1: can bring us happiness and joy. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's just a simple matter of how much
Speaker 1: sleep we've gotten or if we're feeling burnt out from work.
Speaker 1: Have we had practice keeping our mind in that positive state? Um?
Speaker 1: Those things can matter greatly. Let's go deeper into the
Speaker 1: book with a couple of things. I want to talk
Speaker 1: about what you call the power lead. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us what that is. The power lead is where you
Speaker 1: start off conversations or any other interaction you have with
Speaker 1: another person by saying something positive and meaningful. The reason
Speaker 1: I suggest the power lead is one of the first
Speaker 1: tools that we talk about in the book is because
Speaker 1: it is so transformational to start a conversation in a
Speaker 1: positive place as opposed to a negative one. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've all been in a meeting right where someone starts
Speaker 1: off negative and the whole thing only knows dives from there. Versus,
Speaker 1: if you can start off a conversation when you're asked
Speaker 1: how are you by saying something positive and meaningful, or
Speaker 1: a meeting by listing gratitudes, delivering praise, or asking for
Speaker 1: people to to contribute to a positive leading question, it
Speaker 1: completely changes the outcome. As a research or find out,
Speaker 1: even just the first few words of a conversation, I
Speaker 1: can have a high degree of likelihood of predicting the
Speaker 1: outcome of that conversation. You know, so mine this morning
Speaker 1: might have been if you ask me, hey, how are you?
Speaker 1: My power lead could be Oh, I'm doing great. I
Speaker 1: had breakfast with my son this morning and he's being
Speaker 1: so cute. You know, just that simple positive and meaningful
Speaker 1: piece of information encourages people to matching kind and it
Speaker 1: changes the direction of the conversation. And it's not to
Speaker 1: say at any moment that we want to ignore the negative.
Speaker 1: If you have a real problem going on and you're
Speaker 1: talking to someone that you trust, it's okay to of
Speaker 1: course discuss those things right off the top of the conversation.
Speaker 1: But this is on the whole, on the average, what
Speaker 1: are you talking about. Are we just going, oh, I'm stressed,
Speaker 1: I'm tired, I'm exhausted and complaining, or are we sharing
Speaker 1: things that enrich other people's days and let them have
Speaker 1: a window into our positive world. In the book, you
Speaker 1: say that negative people are not bad people. Our brains
Speaker 1: can just get stuck. We can become really good at
Speaker 1: finding what's not working and letting everyone know. And then
Speaker 1: you go on to spend a fair amount of time
Speaker 1: talking about how to deal with negative people in our lives.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a topic that gets everybody's interest.
Speaker 1: So can you give a couple of tips on working
Speaker 1: with the so called negative people in our lives? I
Speaker 1: like not calling them bad. I think that's a great start,
Speaker 1: But but what else? Yeah, negative people? That's probably the
Speaker 1: single biggest question I get from people, because you know,
Speaker 1: they're thinking about at work they're one negative person on
Speaker 1: their business team that's dragging everybody down. Or you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you come home from the office and you're coming
Speaker 1: home to see your family and you're so excited and
Speaker 1: about something going on, and maybe your spouse just kind
Speaker 1: of reigns on your parade um and and you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of times, we really we care about these people,
Speaker 1: we want to help them, and so what's the best
Speaker 1: way to do it. First of all, I think the
Speaker 1: most important thing is to understand that it's not the
Speaker 1: most positive or negative person that wins the battle for
Speaker 1: culture at our companies or in our relationships around the
Speaker 1: dinner table. It's actually the person who's most expressive of
Speaker 1: their mindset. So what that means is, if you're already
Speaker 1: positive and optimistic in general when you are in the
Speaker 1: especially when you're in the presence of the negative person,
Speaker 1: the more that you can be without being annoying, expressive
Speaker 1: of your own positive mindset in a meaningful way, that
Speaker 1: actually can encourage those people to to be more positive
Speaker 1: and it helps them see that the things that are
Speaker 1: you know, are good in the world. Um. But the
Speaker 1: other thing is if that person is continually being negative
Speaker 1: and you have tried and tried to help them see
Speaker 1: the light or look at the world in a different way,
Speaker 1: it's okay to take some distance from them. In the book,
Speaker 1: I talk about this idea of taking a strategic retreat,
Speaker 1: which is to, you know, take some time to take
Speaker 1: some distance from them and and fortify your own positive
Speaker 1: resources by doing those positive habits that we often talk about,
Speaker 1: your gratitudes, exercising, journaling, about meaningful moments, um. Seeing friends
Speaker 1: that bring you up instead of bring you down. And
Speaker 1: when you feel like you're in a good place and
Speaker 1: you can re engage with them, um, But have a plan.
Speaker 1: Don't just go in there, right, don't just call up
Speaker 1: your in law who you typically don't get along with
Speaker 1: on the phone. Instead, have a plan. What could the
Speaker 1: conversation look like? How could it be short and sweet?
Speaker 1: What could you say and get basically a two minute
Speaker 1: drilled down in place so that when you do have
Speaker 1: that next encounter with them, there's at least some sort
Speaker 1: of framework that can help you have a positive, short
Speaker 1: and sweet experience with them. The keys not to, you know,
Speaker 1: change them entirely and change their entire outlook, and that
Speaker 1: conversation is just to have a good experience, which then
Speaker 1: hopefully will create a trajectory of positive experiences with them
Speaker 1: over time and helps you rewrite the social script that
Speaker 1: exists between you. Yeah, I was thinking about your book earlier. Today.
Speaker 1: I had to have a difficult, somewhat difficult meeting with
Speaker 1: somebody and they came in already mad about something else
Speaker 1: that was happening, and I was like, after reading your book,
Speaker 1: you know, I might want to take a strategic retreat here.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately I needed to have the conversation then, but I
Speaker 1: was able to really think about making sure he was
Speaker 1: de escalated before I went into what I was going
Speaker 1: to talk about. That approach is so enlightened because what
Speaker 1: you're doing is you're getting an emotional read on the
Speaker 1: other person, and then you're able to address whatever is
Speaker 1: happening there before you move on to something else. UM.
Speaker 1: I think that that's that really takes into account sort
Speaker 1: of where they're at, um, but also allows you to
Speaker 1: move the conversation or the experience into a more positive place. YEP.
Speaker 1: I think an older version of myself would have recognized
Speaker 1: that he was upset and then just chosen to skip
Speaker 1: the conversation, so I was happy to have persevered. One
Speaker 1: of the things I really liked that you talk about
Speaker 1: was you say, we need to move our brain past
Speaker 1: its natural focus on what we need to improve to
Speaker 1: what is already working. We accelerate towards growth when we
Speaker 1: have perceived progress, not when we feel we still have
Speaker 1: a long way to go. I think that common wisdom
Speaker 1: suggests that in order to create great change in the world,
Speaker 1: we need to focus on all that's broken and figure
Speaker 1: out how we're going to fix it, and then that
Speaker 1: will finally leave us time and resources to then make
Speaker 1: our lives great. And what we're realizing out is the
Speaker 1: research shows you just really need to focus on the
Speaker 1: things that you can improve but or that are already working,
Speaker 1: and that will actually fuel you so much more in
Speaker 1: the long run. Yeah. I think that's in line with
Speaker 1: my experience of negativity can be temporarily useful as a motivator,
Speaker 1: but but positivity is a far better motivator and a
Speaker 1: and a much more long term sufficient one. Most of
Speaker 1: the big changes I've made in my life there might
Speaker 1: have been something that kicked it off from a negativity perspective,
Speaker 1: But it was me focusing on how well I was
Speaker 1: doing as I was doing it that really gave it
Speaker 1: the energy to keep going. When our brain focuses on
Speaker 1: progress and you know, basically the successes we've had and
Speaker 1: the solutions that we're going to use to move forward,
Speaker 1: that that's fuel for the brain um. In a follow
Speaker 1: up study that I did with Arianna Huffington and Sean
Speaker 1: we found that if you merely talk about problems versus
Speaker 1: you talk about problems and potential or actual solutions, you
Speaker 1: change other people's brains um. In particular, when you pair
Speaker 1: a discussion of solutions with problems, you actually can improve
Speaker 1: other people's creative problem solving on subsequent unrelated tasks by
Speaker 1: twenty percent. So you're making the basically smarter um and
Speaker 1: you're improving their mood as significantly as well. So you
Speaker 1: know what that means is that we can talk about
Speaker 1: the negative, we just have to talk about it in
Speaker 1: a different way, and how important it is to focus
Speaker 1: on how far we've come. You know that that's one
Speaker 1: problem that I'm finding with the news right now is
Speaker 1: that oftentimes you can walk away from the news if
Speaker 1: you read too many negative stories with this belief that
Speaker 1: the world is just falling apart. Right, it's as if
Speaker 1: the apocalypse is coming or it's here or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: But when you look at the stats, there's a completely
Speaker 1: different picture. According to Harvard researcher Stephen Pinker, we are
Speaker 1: living in the safest times in human history when you
Speaker 1: look at war deaths, or number of death from infectious diseases,
Speaker 1: and and all kinds of other key indicators of quality
Speaker 1: of life overall. So if we think that the world
Speaker 1: is falling apart, well, why would we want to apply
Speaker 1: our behavior and try to make things better? Versus we see, Hey, yes,
Speaker 1: there's lots of things that are left to do to
Speaker 1: fix this world, to make it a better place. But
Speaker 1: look how far we've come. That second viewpoint is much
Speaker 1: more fueling. Amen. I I couldn't agree more. I do
Speaker 1: think that it's easy to see things is falling apart.
Speaker 1: You know, we do things two steps forward, one step back,
Speaker 1: and if you're in the middle of that one step back,
Speaker 1: it feels very painful. But if you take a broader
Speaker 1: time perspective, from my perspective, and I've read Stephen Pinker's work,
Speaker 1: it's getting better to be a person than it was
Speaker 1: in the past. Absolutely, And I know, you know, especially
Speaker 1: more recently with all the you know, all the news
Speaker 1: that being very, very negative. It's just it's it's so
Speaker 1: important to remember of that as an anchor point to
Speaker 1: help us. Yeah. I love the little idea from Voltaire's
Speaker 1: book about tending your own garden. I find that to
Speaker 1: be such a powerful thing to go back to when
Speaker 1: the negativity out in the world feels overwhelming, to sort
Speaker 1: of stake out my little area and say, well, not
Speaker 1: in here. Yeah. I met this incredible woman whom I
Speaker 1: talked about in the book. Her name's Sharon, and so
Speaker 1: we were developing a positive psychology program for one of
Speaker 1: the major big box stores. And you know, there's one
Speaker 1: point five million associates, so you want to make sure
Speaker 1: to get it right before you roll out this program.
Speaker 1: So we went to pilot it and get feedback at
Speaker 1: a number of stores. We get to the store in
Speaker 1: Memphis and I gave our little spiel and this woman,
Speaker 1: after the morning meeting comes up to us and says, oh,
Speaker 1: you're a happiness researcher. I'm the happiest woman in the world.
Speaker 1: You should study me. And so I said, Okay, tell
Speaker 1: me your story. And so she said, well, um, you
Speaker 1: know I was I waited until later in life to
Speaker 1: get married because you know, I just didn't need anyone
Speaker 1: until then. But I met this amazing man and we've
Speaker 1: been married for about six months when my mother dies
Speaker 1: suddenly of health complications, and I was very close to her.
Speaker 1: And so she goes on to tell me that her
Speaker 1: husband was really stuck by her and was this beautiful
Speaker 1: support system all the way through the morning process. And
Speaker 1: so about six months after that, she's she's findingly starting
Speaker 1: to just you know, sort of feel back to normal
Speaker 1: when he gets killed in a car crash. And so
Speaker 1: I'm looking at her and she must, you know, I
Speaker 1: like high. I can't hide a single emotion. It's always
Speaker 1: on my face. And she saw that I was confused
Speaker 1: and didn't understand the story and how she could call
Speaker 1: herself the happiest woman in the world, and so she said, well,
Speaker 1: the reason I have the right too is because after
Speaker 1: morning my husband's loss, I got to a point where
Speaker 1: I said to myself, every morning, I have a choice
Speaker 1: of whether or not I can I'm going to choose happiness.
Speaker 1: I have that choice, and it's whether it's up to
Speaker 1: me whether or not I exercise it. And what she
Speaker 1: did was she consciously decided that every day she was
Speaker 1: going to choose to be happy. And moreover, when she
Speaker 1: came into work, she chose to be very open about
Speaker 1: the fact that she had gone through that struggle, but
Speaker 1: she was choosing to be happy at that point. I
Speaker 1: talked to her co workers and they said that she
Speaker 1: was the most positive person that they knew by the
Speaker 1: way her power lead was great because she would just say,
Speaker 1: it's a great day, how are you doing. She doesn't
Speaker 1: even let you get in there and mess it up. Um.
Speaker 1: She was just absolutely incredible. But she just she reminded
Speaker 1: me that no matter what's going on in the external world,
Speaker 1: we have that choice internally, and the question is what
Speaker 1: do we decide to do with our our finite lifetime
Speaker 1: and our finite resources, and then what kind of impact
Speaker 1: do we want to have on the people around us.
Speaker 1: When you say choosing to be happy, I have a
Speaker 1: little bit of an internal reaction to that as somebody
Speaker 1: who has suffered from depression, and I know a lot
Speaker 1: of listen nurse also have that feeling. And I don't
Speaker 1: think that's exactly what we're saying, because I don't think
Speaker 1: you can necessarily, at least to me, it doesn't feel
Speaker 1: like I can flip on a happy switch, but I
Speaker 1: can flip on a switch of how I want to
Speaker 1: view the world and what stories I want to give
Speaker 1: power and energy to. Yeah. Absolutely, And I completely understand
Speaker 1: as well, because when I was in my mid twenties,
Speaker 1: I suffered a year long about with depression. And I
Speaker 1: know depressions different for everybody. For me, I was just
Speaker 1: I think I was isolated, and you know, I had
Speaker 1: I was so excited the year before I got this
Speaker 1: awesome job in London. I was moving overseas. It was
Speaker 1: like top of the world, right. And then I think
Speaker 1: because I was working from home, I knew no one,
Speaker 1: I had no social life, and I was isolated and
Speaker 1: I'm a very extroverted person in many ways, the whole
Speaker 1: combination didn't jive. But um, and so I know I
Speaker 1: understand what it's you can't at the in those moments oftentimes,
Speaker 1: you know say, oh, I'm all of a sudden, I'm
Speaker 1: just happy. I just flipped a switch. But I think
Speaker 1: what we can do is we can in the midst
Speaker 1: of those moments, we can still maintain an optimistic mindset
Speaker 1: that things will get better. We can say, you know,
Speaker 1: I know that I have sixteen waking hours, and with
Speaker 1: one of them, I'm going to go to the gym
Speaker 1: and get some exercise because I know that it can
Speaker 1: make a difference. You know, there have been studies that
Speaker 1: show that. Or I'm going to connect with friends because
Speaker 1: you know. For instance, one piece of research that I
Speaker 1: hold close to my heart is the greatest predictor of
Speaker 1: long term levels of happiness that we have in the
Speaker 1: research is our levels of social support. You don't have
Speaker 1: to have a ton of friends, but just a handful
Speaker 1: of meaningful relationships, and if we can stay connected to
Speaker 1: other people, then that can help buffer us against depression
Speaker 1: and just low mood. Um. So if we know that,
Speaker 1: then we say, okay, well I'm going to consciously try
Speaker 1: to schedule some time with friends to go for a
Speaker 1: walk or to have a meaningful conversation. Those small habit
Speaker 1: changes for me, those that's what walked me out of depression.
Speaker 1: And that's what that that's been beneficial for you know,
Speaker 1: obviously thousands of people. So it's but it's maintaining I
Speaker 1: think that hope and optimism in the midst of that,
Speaker 1: and I think that can be in many many respects,
Speaker 1: that can be a choice. I don't know that. I
Speaker 1: think we have a lot of control over what emotion
Speaker 1: we feel, in particular when we're particularly in depression. But
Speaker 1: I do think that we have some degree of control
Speaker 1: over our thoughts and our behavior, and I think those
Speaker 1: can act as levers, At least they have for me.
Speaker 1: By working on my thinking in my behavior, I'm able
Speaker 1: to sort of, you know, using a lever, adjust my emotions.
Speaker 1: You know, I can't do it directly, but I have
Speaker 1: tools that can help. Yeah, And and it's so incredible
Speaker 1: to see, you know, just in my own personal life,
Speaker 1: how how quickly our brain can forget how good some
Speaker 1: of these positive behaviors can be for our mood and
Speaker 1: how we feel. You know, I have a low mood.
Speaker 1: I'll say, it's exactly the time when I don't want
Speaker 1: to go exercise, right, But even if I just put
Speaker 1: on my sneakers and I go out for a ten
Speaker 1: or fifteen minute walk outside, right, nothing strenuous, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: all the all of a sudden, I'm feeling better and
Speaker 1: I forgot, you know, It's like I forgot that that
Speaker 1: would actually be good. The brain is adaptive for good
Speaker 1: and for bad. And but you know one other study
Speaker 1: that I often talk about in relation to this, just
Speaker 1: because I think this is so powerful and this is
Speaker 1: something that you don't hear about on the news. There
Speaker 1: was a study done with one of the major um
Speaker 1: antidepressants and looked at it in comparison to exercise as
Speaker 1: a treatment for mild depression. And what they found was
Speaker 1: that for so that what they did in the studies,
Speaker 1: they gave one group antidepressants, another group they had them
Speaker 1: exercise for thirty minutes a day, three to five times
Speaker 1: a week, and then the other group they did both
Speaker 1: um okay, So in general all three groups had sort
Speaker 1: of equal levels of moving out of the depressive state.
Speaker 1: But what was really remarkable was the researchers followed them
Speaker 1: for two years and the group that had exercised were
Speaker 1: the ones that had a thirty nine percent lower relapse
Speaker 1: rate than the folks that had either that had taken antidepressants.
Speaker 1: So this is not a repudiation of antipressants. I think
Speaker 1: that they serve a very valid and important purpose in
Speaker 1: our society in many respects um if that's what your
Speaker 1: doctor feels. Great. But um, but what I think is
Speaker 1: what this is indicative of is that you when you
Speaker 1: do a habit that reminds your brain that your behavior matters,
Speaker 1: like getting out the door every day and exercising, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you've got that in your tool kit
Speaker 1: and you can go back to it if you need
Speaker 1: and that can help protect you for experiences later on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. I mean, I have I take antidepressants, and
Speaker 1: they've been a huge help in my life, but they
Speaker 1: are not alone enough. It's like it's the it's all
Speaker 1: those other things. I mean, exercise for me is it's
Speaker 1: really required at this point in my life if I
Speaker 1: want to feel half decent um And so yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: I love that idea of having a toolkit and just
Speaker 1: going back to it over and over even when it's hard. Yeah. Absolutely. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for the work that you're doing.
Speaker 1: Thank you for coming on the show. I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: reading your book and getting a chance to talk with you. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me, and thanks for the work
Speaker 1: you're doing. You're a positive broadcaster, which is that's my
Speaker 1: big wish for the world. So thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate you inviting me on your podcast. Okay, excellent,
Speaker 1: Take care bite. You can learn more about Michelle Galan
Speaker 1: and this podcast at one you Feed dot net slash Galen.
Speaker 1: That's g i E l A N, the peace symbol,
Speaker 1: the letter four, though no letter four. I'm kidding. I
Speaker 1: know you'll figure it out. If what you just heard
Speaker 1: was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to
Speaker 1: the one you Feed podcast. Head over to one you
Speaker 1: Feed dot net slash support